On the internet only a small number of people actually participate in any social capacity. In a forum you might have seven lurkers for every three participants. Of thirty participants you might only have three who stick around as regular members of a community. Of those who stick around you might only have a precious handful that drive the majority of a forum's discussion. This is evidenced clearly in other Three Kingdoms forums, and to an extent here as well. I think SoSZ has done quite well in terms of community participation. My massive post total is only a small percentage of the whole entire forum, for example.

That said, we're looking for people in that small portion of our community (and down the road through Kongming's Archives) to contribute and edit articles. I would be thrilled if we churned out one solid quality article every week. That would be awesome to me. There's no reason why we couldn't churn out a quality article every two days, but there's also plenty of precedent for this project to produce an article only once a month. It is just how these things work.

Right now the concept is new and I'm sure folks here are looking at it. It may be a little confusing, though, because it is new and I have not documented all of what we are up to yet (although people are welcome to just start contributing even if they don't know any of our little markup code). Once I outline our custom BBCode tags we may have a little more interest. Also, it may take a few weeks for some members to get around to joining.

Presently, those of us who are here can create and edit articles. We don't need to worry about participation from others. We can just do our thing and smile as we see them published. Someone else will join up, cautiously create or edit a new article, and as time passes they will become more confident and interested. After a while we'll have a handful of people who are using this section.

Look at the Development Project. It started with only a handful of people and even some of the most active community members showed little interest in signing up. Over time, though, some wonderful people joined the project and started to contribute information. Every time I log on to make a change, now, I encounter something new. On a day-to-day basis progress has not been great, but over time it has turned into something which I see as quite exceptional (if not incredible).

That said, I am going to be adding a few things as time passes over the next little while. I'll also be introducing a few articles which I am not going to be completing from the ground up. I hope some of you will jump in and help with their editing and, perhaps, even their completion.

Back from pushing some big-ass cart over cobblestone roads through some dubious part of Philly.

I'm dying of exhaustion, but must seize precious internet time! (I really won't have any internet access from tomorrow on until Saturday...)

I think part of the reason why there hasn't been overwhelming support is because people don't know how they can contribute. And I mean, even I didn't figure out how this is supposed to work until today. It takes time to think of stuff to contribute, and anyone who's managed an information page can tell you that users tend to be very reluctant in giving constructive feedback (in terms of additions and modifications).

The announcement was also announced as a test project. The general public doesn't like participating in test projects. Once we've got a bunch of pages set up and people figure out what kinds of stuff make it to KMA, I'm sure the contributions will come trickling in.

I would suggest making another announcement once we've got a bunch of articles going, focusing on how exactly people can contribute and on how shiny the outcome can look, rather than on trying to sell it as a new idea.

The reason why I asked if this was only for games, James, was that I wanted to make changes to some of my earlier SGZ bios, and didn't want to have to bother you with ever wording change I decide to make. I don't know how hard it'd be to make the footnote system work with this new code stuff, and I guess you'd have to take the current pages off, post here as a new topic, and re-upload it to KMA? I haven't the faintest how this works, but you have until I get back from Kyrgyzstan to figure it out. (Go goof off tomorrow.)

"Whatever you do, don't fall off the bridge! It'll be a pain to try to get back up again." - Private, DW 8

Lady Wu wrote:I think part of the reason why there hasn't been overwhelming support is because people don't know how they can contribute. And I mean, even I didn't figure out how this is supposed to work until today. It takes time to think of stuff to contribute, and anyone who's managed an information page can tell you that users tend to be very reluctant in giving constructive feedback (in terms of additions and modifications).

I can think of other reasons too.

That's why I'm quite optimistic at this point. This isn't the first project I have introduced and I expected participation to be slow at first while all the gears were being worked into their proper places. Once it is wrapped up and made shiny I'll break out the black bags and we'll go snatch ourselves some unwillinghappy! participants.

If I knew how smoothly things would have gone I might not have even bothered with the 'idea' announcement. Instead I probably would have chargedplunged! right into the idea, showing people how it works in practice.

Lady Wu wrote:The announcement was also announced as a test project. The general public doesn't like participating in test projects. Once we've got a bunch of pages set up and people figure out what kinds of stuff make it to KMA, I'm sure the contributions will come trickling in. [...] I would suggest making another announcement once we've got a bunch of articles going, focusing on how exactly people can contribute and on how shiny the outcome can look, rather than on trying to sell it as a new idea.

Your thoughts are as my own.

Lady Wu wrote:The reason why I asked if this was only for games, James, was that I wanted to make changes to some of my earlier SGZ bios, and didn't want to have to bother you with ever wording change I decide to make. I don't know how hard it'd be to make the footnote system work with this new code stuff, and I guess you'd have to take the current pages off, post here as a new topic, and re-upload it to KMA? I haven't the faintest how this works, but you have until I get back from Kyrgyzstan to figure it out. (Go goof off tomorrow.)

This, unfortunately, will not be compatible with the biography project. The biographies, as something far more advanced than anything we will be doing here, is being integrated with the development project. I've already created a generally functional tool which can be used to edit biographies on Kongming's Archives and it uses its own dedicated markup (which is also like BBCode). The markup for biographies is actually quite simple. There's no need to worry about block-level elements. You pretty much just have two types of notes (Pei Songzhi, Translator, whatever), references for each note, and some special goodies like [poem][/poem] and [memorial][/memorial]. Many biographies are still hard-coded over at Kongming's Archives but I have started moving a few over to the database (thus making them available to this tool).

The tool is crude in the sense it cannot differentiate between authors (e.g. it only has an administrator mode which allows access to all biographies) and it cannot delete or add biographies. It can, however, edit every biography on the database and it does so quite reliably. Steve's translation of Liu Bei’s Sanguozhi Biography, for example, exists in the database and is managed by this tool. It does most of the advanced stuff any other biography would need to do and Sanguozhi biographies are fully supported.

If you like, just let me know what biographies you would like to start editing and I will transport them over to the database. It should be pretty obvious what needs to be done from there (and I will give you access to the biography tool so you can access them). Or if you want to be really creative I'll add some blank entries to the database (thus making them available to the tool) so you can just start adding them as you deem appropriate. I don't mind transporting them, though. Using regular expressions I can do it with reasonable speed and I'd be happy to save you the trouble.

This might also be a good time to let you know that the note system there gives you the ability to enter note numbers but also completely ignores them when rendering notes at Kongming's Archives. It automatically numbers each note by order of appearance. This allows you to add a new note seven and do something like change the old note seven to note '7b' rather than re-number every note in the biography.

Would you mind moving the Empress Bian comprehensive bio over? The version I sent to be publised is missing the stuff from SGYY.

My avatar is Roy from Fire Emblem: Binding Blade, as he appears in Fire Emblem: AwakeningQuote of the "Day": "The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before." -Neil Gaiman

Whoops, sorry. Here's what I meant: Could I please have access to the Biography tool in the development project, and could you please move the Empress Bian Comprehensive Biography I wrote into it?

My avatar is Roy from Fire Emblem: Binding Blade, as he appears in Fire Emblem: AwakeningQuote of the "Day": "The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before." -Neil Gaiman

Qu Hui wrote:Whoops, sorry. Here's what I meant: Could I please have access to the Biography tool in the development project, and could you please move the Empress Bian Comprehensive Biography I wrote into it?

I would be thrilled to give you access, but that particular tool still needs some additional work, particularly in the area of user management. Given interest, I'm okay with putting that time in, but right now while packing and moving that might be a little bit of trouble.

If you want to update that biography you are welcome to re-submit a fully edited version and I will do the heavy lifting myself?

Hi James, I voluntered for this ages ago but never actually wrote an article. However for my history coursework last year I wrote an essay about the 3K, at 3,500 words its probably a bit longer than you wanted/intended but is it the kind of thing you want posted here?

Sun Fin wrote:Hi James, I voluntered for this ages ago but never actually wrote an article. However for my history coursework last year I wrote an essay about the 3K, at 3,500 words its probably a bit longer than you wanted/intended but is it the kind of thing you want posted here?

If you're comfortable with the research and think it adds something new for readers, sure!